PY1_OA_Neeraj edit

Background: Majority of prison inmates live in poor living conditions. Lack of meaningful activity, endemic substance abuse, recurrent violence and sexual exploitation, loss of freedom, separation from family and friends, uncertainty about the future, and the traumas of prison life all contribute to making living in prison a stressful experience. Prison inmates usually apply inappropriate coping styles, like avoidance for solving their issues. This study was conducted at Govt. Medical College Patiala (India) to determine psychiatric morbidity and coping skills among prison inmates. Methods: This was a cross sectional study on 250 male prisoners where a purposive stratified sampling method was done. Screening was done by GHQ-12 and diagnosis was made using MINI and ICD-10. 36 item coping strategies Check List-Hindi was applied to assess coping strategies among the prisoners. The observations were statistically analyzed by using software Statistica 7.0 & SPSS 20. Results: 124 prison inmates were found to have psychiatric illness using Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview giving a net prevalence of psychiatric morbidity to be 49.6%. Prisoners with psychiatric disorder scored more on domains of coping skills, viz., denial (t=8.03; p<0.01) and internalization (t=6.00; p<0.01); lowest scores on domain of coping skills, viz., externalization (t=10.47; p<0.01) as compared with prisoners with no psychiatric disorder. Conclusion: Psychiatric services need to be developed appropriately in the prison set up considering the enormous psychiatric morbidity in the inmates. The high rate of common psychiatric disorders calls for the use of improved psychiatric screening instruments, improved assessment and treatment capacities in prisons.